Amy Walter and Errin Haines on voting rights legislation and the filibuster

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• Judy Woodruff:

  And for more on some of these biggest political stories of the week, we turn to Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report and Errin Haines of the 19th news. Tamara Keith is away.

  It is so good to see both of

  And let's pick up where we left off with Lisa on the — this big voting rights piece of legislation.

  Amy, to you first. With Joe Manchin weighing in now and saying he's not going to go for something that doesn't have Republican buy-in, where does that leave voting rights?

• Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

  Well, the other thing that Senator Manchin said in that op-ed and he has said publicly is he supports voting rights legislation that's more narrowly tailored.

  And there's one of those in Congress right now that he supports, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. And he says this does have some bipartisan support. It has one bipartisan co-sponsor. And that's Lisa Murkowski, senator from Alaska.

  But, Judy, you know as well as anybody that that doesn't get you 60 votes. You need 10, not just one other Republican to get something past the finish line. So the discussion right now is about the filibuster.

  Would Joe Manchin support ousting the filibuster to pass something like a more tailored voting rights bill? And the answer, which he seems to give now every five minutes, is no. He's not interested in getting rid of that.

  The one thing that I think is also important to understand is, while Joe Manchin is taking the bulk of the criticism about his opposition to upending the filibuster, there are a lot of other Democrats in the Senate who quietly agree with him. He is something of a heat shield for those Democrats. He's taking all the incoming and protecting them from having to say out loud how they feel about getting rid of this filibuster, which would have really tremendous and unforeseen consequences for the future.

• Judy Woodruff:

  So, Errin, the issues don't get much more important than voting rights this year for the Democrats.

  If they're not able to hold their ranks together on this, what does it say?

• Errin Haines:

  Well, what it says is — especially to Democratic voters, is that they're questioning what it is that they voted for.

  Democrats asked these voters during the 2020 election to do whatever it took, to get creative, to really fight for this democracy and to hand them the Democratic majority that they now have in Congress, and also the presidency and the vice presidency.

  And so those voters are now looking to their elected officials, especially at the federal level, and expecting results. They don't care about things like the filibuster or budget reconciliation. They don't know what those things mean. They only know that they expect that their vote should be counted, and protecting or expanding voting rights is certainly a way that they would expect those — their votes to be counted.

  And so this is a very frustrating thing for a lot of the voters that I talked to, not to mention the organizers, the activists who galvanized so many of those voters, even in the midst of a pandemic, to turn out in the record numbers that gave Democrats and majority.

  But, for now, a lot of those folks do not feel like Democrats are governing as if they are the ones who just won the election in 2020.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And, Amy, just — I mean, we're just, what, six months into the Biden administration, and to be saying, throwing in the towel, although that's not — obviously, not what the Democrats are doing. They haven't publicly given up yet.

  But it doesn't bode well, does it?

• Amy Walter:

  It doesn't.

  But this is what happens in a 50/50 Senate. And it's also the reality for a Democratic Party that, look, their 50/50 Senate is only there because there are a couple of senators who represent really red states. Joe Manchin represents a state that Donald Trump won by almost 40 points.

  There are other members up in 2022 who represent sort of purple or swing states that also have to be aware that, to win, they can't just rely on Democratic votes. And so, again, this is the reality of the world in which we currently live, where just a few thousand votes separates Democrats from the majority in the House and for control of the Senate come 2022.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And while we're talking about voting and voting rights, Errin, we did see the former president show up in North Carolina over the weekend, giving a very political speech, very critical of President Biden, former President Trump again going after the — Dr. Anthony Fauci, but notably saying that he plans to get involved and campaign for congressional Senate candidates in 2022.

  Here's just a little bit of what the former president said.

  Donald Trump, Former President of the United States: The survival of America depends upon our ability to elect Republicans at every level, starting with the midterms next year. We have to get it done.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Errin, what does that mean for Democrats and for Republicans?

  Presumably, he's firing up some Republicans. But what's the Democratic response to him?

• Errin Haines:

  Well, I think that we have to continue to look to the states.

  And another GOP state convention that happened over the weekend was down in my home state of Georgia, where you definitely had some very interesting dynamics that I think could kind of portend what we can expect to see going forward for the midterms and possibly in the next four years.

  Governor Brian Kemp took the stage at the convention in Jekyll Island and was booed. This is somebody who had said publicly that Georgia's elections were fair and accurate, in opposition to the former president who wanted a recount in Georgia, despite those ballots being counted three times.

  People like Governor Kemp, people like Secretary of State Raffensperger, who talked about the integrity of the elections in Georgia, were put on — put in the former president's crosshairs, while folks like Marjorie Taylor Greene were hailed by Republicans in Georgia for her political — rejection of political correctness and really embrace of the former president and continued support of him.

  And so you had Republicans being rewarded, the Republicans who stood with President — former President Trump and were calling for an investigation or to look into the election results in Georgia.

  And so the extent to which we continue to see President Trump out on the campaign trail, which he signaled that he is willing — is something that he's going to be doing, the extent to which he continues to talk about a rigged election or the false threat to election integrity in this country, and Republicans continuing to push these laws at the state level and continuing to kind of align themselves with those ideas, I think seeing how long the so-called big lie is going to continue to last in our election cycle, I think what we know now is, almost six months after the January 6 insurrection, that that is still very much in our political ecosystem.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And no doubt about it.

  And, Amy, what does the president — the former president's involvement now at this point, what does — how is that going to change the makeup of this campaign between now and November of next year?

• Amy Walter:

  And potentially the makeup of Congress.

  Judy, the other thing he did in North Carolina, besides, as Errin pointed out, still continuing to make the baseless claim that the election was rigged, is, he endorsed a candidate for the North Carolina Senate. So why is this important?

  Well, when Donald Trump says, we got to take back the House and the Senate for Republicans, what he is actually saying is, we need to take back Congress with the kinds of candidates that are like me, or kind of candidates that get my seal of approval.

  Now, some of those candidates are going to win. Some of them aren't. But the fact is, if they do go on to succeed next November, it means that the Congress is going to look a lot Trumpier than it does at this moment.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And that's what we're already looking at the possibility of. Here we are, early June 2021.

  Amy Walter, Errin Haines, thank you both.

• Amy Walter:

  You're welcome.